|
Fren posted:This isn't Achewood anymore, it's Probe The Depths Of Onstad. Whatever's bothering him is clearly showing in both his work ethic and his output. Dominion posted:Doing surreal unfunny poo poo is pretty novel though.
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 01:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 01:00 |
|
|
Darthemed posted:Really? Yeah, but the rot had clearly set in at this stage and all the Lash of Thanatos needed to apotheosize into Fast Times at Achewood High was Beef pondering whether he should suck Cartilage Head's enormous phallus.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 02:21
|
|
|
Van Dis posted:The vehicle for humor is a character making misogynistic statements; whether they're lampooned or in earnest doesn't bear at all on the fact that Onstad uses misogyny to construct the Achewood world and characters. Trying to extrapolate that to "Ray thinks something dumb" is pretty bad reading. Any bad opinions on 'All in the Family' while we're at it?
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 02:32
|
|
|
Achewood for quite awhile, but in this arc in particular, has sincerely felt like Onstad actually wants to be working on some new property entirely. There's no particular reason this SHOULD be Achewood, and from his interviews, it sounds honestly like he's been sick of writing Achewood for a long time. I suppose this is just more comfortable (or more theoretically financially viable, I suppose, at least in the short term), but it really feels too 'safe' to really be as fresh as he wants, and the feel just doesn't mesh at all. He can't just pound these characters into any shape he wants and expect them to remain recognizable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 03:37
|
|
|
Achewood has done plenty of surrealism before, but I think what the last batch of updates has been missing is an anchor back into the Achewood world we know. In the Lash of Thanatos arc, Roast Beef was being his usual morose self and making oblique Java jokes, and in the Lonis Edison arc Ray was busy being, well, Ray. But the last few strips just don't have a link to ground we can stand on. Ray is there, but it's like he's in "temporarily retarded" mode again and isn't at all himself. So right now the reader feels adrift because he wants to read Achewood, but instead gets some bizarre Eraserhead junk featuring a shoddy cardboard stand-in for one of the characters. It's like seeing a production of Hamlet featuring Lyle, playing the part straight and bearing no resemblance to the character we know other than visually. It might be interesting, but ultimately it's not at all what we came for. This arc actually did a good job up through I HAVE A PRINCE ALBERT, but these last three strips have fallen flat. Besides, Ray's already had some run-ins with weird math that were far more entertaining. Really, I just want some old-fashioned banter and shenanigans. It feels silly to explore the Depths of Ray when we've already determined that all he merits is a brochure. Nick at Nite posted:Achewood for quite awhile, but in this arc in particular, has sincerely felt like Onstad actually wants to be working on some new property entirely. There's no particular reason this SHOULD be Achewood, and from his interviews, it sounds honestly like he's been sick of writing Achewood for a long time. I think one important factor is that Achewood no longer seems to rely on character interactions and snappy dialogue, but on surrealism that can function perfectly well without those characters (and would probably function better, in fact). Achewood made its bones on excellent character writing, and it's abandoned that more and more in favor of plot and atmosphere that deserve their own voice and, frankly, don't work in the Achewood world. You can't rewrite Cheers characters into Lost and expect a seamless transition, or for your audience to not notice. RocketMermaid fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 11, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 03:43
|
|
|
I just want more strips with Philipe's friend calling him a homo jackass or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 03:46
|
|
|
Bloody Hedgehog posted:I just want more strips with Philipe's friend calling him a homo jackass or whatever. What the hell happened to Ultra Peanut, anyway? Did Ray's banjo get her?
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 03:53
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:Really? The Lash of Thanatos was a pretty lovely arc and, in my view, where the series' rot really began to settle in. That was the first storyline where it felt like Onstad was using surrealism as a crutch.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 09:24
|
|
|
Bloody Hedgehog posted:I just want more strips with Philipe's friend calling him a homo jackass or whatever. I remember seeing this alt text and getting psyched http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04242006 In light of this newest strip it's kind of tragic that I can remember doing that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 09:50
|
|
|
kreayshawns talent posted:I remember seeing this alt text and getting psyched http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04242006  about Philippe. And then he got to the dump and suddenly it was all hilarious. Ah, memories. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 09:52
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:That's not really anything new, though, and Onstad's real-life Circumstances have always added a bit to the Achewood experience. there's a significant difference between an author drawing inspiration from his life's circumstances, and an author's mental and emotional state being represented vicariously both through the quality and frequency of his work. The former is perfectly healthy and encouraged, the latter is embarrassing for everyone involved.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 17:06
|
|
|
Also I guess Ray still doesn't understand how a laser printer works http://achewood.com/index.php?date=09272005
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 19:25
|
|
|
I like Achewood when it's funny, and when it's unhinged and dark, but the frequency of his work does frustrate me. I don't doubt for an instant that Onstad has some pretty debilitating depression—Roast Beef is just too dead-on a portrayal of that for me to think otherwise. Roast Beef being too depressed to finish chewing through a piece of toast is hilariously absurd, but I know exactly what that feels like. You're only eating because you have to eat, your stomach is cramping up, and it's a stale whole grain bread that tastes like sand and sucks all the moisture out of your mouth.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 20:17
|
|
|
Bloody Hedgehog posted:I just want more strips with Philipe's friend calling him a homo jackass or whatever. Ha ha! Yeah, I guess I am a little retarded! "What's a guy to do!" ♫♪ I guess that I'm retarded But what's a guy to do- I like to marry things I find I'm glad that I found you! ♫♪
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 20:23
|
|
|
Fren posted:there's a significant difference between an author drawing inspiration from his life's circumstances, and an author's mental and emotional state being represented vicariously both through the quality and frequency of his work. The former is perfectly healthy and encouraged, the latter is embarrassing for everyone involved. In what context is an author's mental and emotional state not represented by the quality of his work? And how is it embarrassing? Serious questions; I can almost get the point you're making, I just block up every time I try to make sense of that part.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 20:42
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:In what context is an author's mental and emotional state not represented by the quality of his work? And how is it embarrassing? Serious questions; I can almost get the point you're making, I just block up every time I try to make sense of that part. The guy has several arcs and comics that literally wouldn't have existed if Eraserhead and Twin Peaks didn't exist, so he's going to actually call out David Lynch outright and then deliver...this...it's not really his his mental and emotional state that I think people are noticing but his creative state. The arc that finished right before this and the gap in output right after it are notable. He wants to do darker surreal stuff instead of the small snippets here and there of Trouble Man or whatever but doesn't want to walk away from Achewood completely yet. This current arc and the Lash of Thanatos were the only arcs where reading them, I was always thinking "man, what's going on in Achewood right now?" whereas in past arcs it wasn't as obtrusive and you could roll with it (because it was hilarious). It was part of the overall package. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Feb 11, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2012 23:05
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:In what context is an author's mental and emotional state not represented by the quality of his work? And how is it embarrassing? Serious questions; I can almost get the point you're making, I just block up every time I try to make sense of that part. The last two storylines in Achewood: * one of the main characters is kidnapped by another, and raped. * one of the main characters suffers a seizure due to alcohol withdrawal, and is in a coma where he's tied up and tortured. Under any circumstances these should be cause for alarm. As the final gasp of a usually funny, incisive, and poignant webcomic, it should be pretty clear: Regardless of whether he's done 'surreal' before, Onstad isn't just doing 'surreal', he's going off the deep end due to demons in his life.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 03:07
|
|
|
Onstad has had characters shoot and kill each other, has had Roast Beef vomit onto an electrical socket to commit suicide, he's shown that Roast Beef was tied into a breadbag with an electrical cord as a baby, he's had Ray exploit Todd's drug addiction to the point of breakdown (in the name of entertaining some faceless audience), and a certain five-year-old is repeatedly told horribly unpleasant things by a robot programmed to lie. Nice Pete is basically defined by being a series of poor choices for socially-acceptable or well-adjusted living: he's kidnapped children (for ice cream!), cut off a finger or two on webcam, exposed himself to children and carved wounds in his stomach with a knife, and put pictures of his murder victims online. As the tail end of Achewood, it's not so much noticing a sign that says 'Bridge May Be Icy' as noticing how much closer the bottom of the ravine seems to be. Does Onstad have issues with reconciling his desire to create I hope I'm not coming off as too much of a Pat, I just miss what Achewood used to be.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 05:41
|
|
|
I don't think there's anything wrong with a stretch of dark/surreal strips with the proviso that it goes down a lot easier when it's surrounded by regular, frequent strips. My only real issue with this latest arc is that other than the Prince Albert strip, the humor has been in how hosed up the situation is... but there has been a long stretch of NO strips before it, a delay in getting the latest strip, and because he posted that it was going to be a triptych, I interpreted that as meaning the third would "complete" the arc rather than continue it. That last one is more my issue than anything else, but I'd like Achewood to get back to a semi-regular update schedule. Once or twice a week with the odd week with 3-4 updates is fine by me so long as I don't have to worry that I'll read a strip one week and then have to wait potentially several weeks till the next one. I still think the quality of Achewood is as high as ever, there's just less of it in an irregular schedule and makes it difficult for me to really get into what is going on.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 05:43
|
|
|
Fren posted:The last two storylines in Achewood: No.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 06:05
|
|
|
Am I the only one that's just glad achewood is back? 
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 07:17
|
|
|
Fren posted:The last two storylines in Achewood: You're overstating the case rather. Teodor wasn't raped (what happened to him was certainly pretty creepy, but it would be hard to construe it as rape) and Ray's being "tortured" is a) a coma dream and b) totally ridiculous. He's being tortured by the prospect of women that can do math. A laser printer grew a tiny arm and triggered a ceiling whisk that is whirring inexorably towards him. I also think it's ludicrous to say "by reading this author's work, I can perceive that they're deeply troubled and going insane vs. just writing in a dark, surreal style". It's exactly the same thing as "whoa, this person must have been ON WEED when they made this crazy thing!" e: also this is a comic where characters like Nice Pete, Cartilage Head, No-No and Trouble Man exist on a regular basis. It's always had dark, surreal elements. Remember that comic where Roast Beef throws himself off a bridge because he heard his dad get shot? Android Blues fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Feb 12, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 16:34
|
|
|
The Pony Incident posted:Am I the only one that's just glad achewood is back? Nope. Sup dude.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 18:06
|
|
|
The Pony Incident posted:Am I the only one that's just glad achewood is back? Nope, me too.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2012 22:24
|
|
|
Achewood won't truly be "back" to me until we get more one-shot humorous strips in between the dark/surreal story arcs. It was the light that allowed us to appreciate the dark, that sort of thing. Not that I don't like the longer stuff, of course, but I'd have to say I still get more chuckles out of the one-shot jokes like "you ain't havin' nobody over if there's a drat cumshot" or Judas Priest Friday or telling Charlie Brown that he's dead, than I do out of the extended story arcs.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 02:08
|
|
|
Some days I dream of just closing this thread, in the hope that the people who mostly just want to talk about cookbook money and complain about the recent updates wouldn't go looking for its replacement.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 05:51
|
|
|
Doc Faustus posted:Some days I dream of just closing this thread, in the hope that the people who mostly just want to talk about cookbook money and complain about the recent updates wouldn't go looking for its replacement. Well, just remember: You can do whatever you want in life. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 06:44
|
|
|
Doc Faustus posted:Some days I dream of just closing this thread, in the hope that the people who mostly just want to talk about cookbook money and complain about the recent updates wouldn't go looking for its replacement. So you want the thread to be, what, just a bunch of "remember that time" posts? There's not much to talk about in an Achewood thread nowadays other than complain about lack of updates, complain about lovely updates, or complain about Onstad.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 06:51
|
|
|
I will say this about the newer stuff: it looks drat good. There seems to be more artistry to it than there was previously, as opposed to simply being illustrated, if that makes sense. It seems like he's putting a lot more effort into the panels and I can imagine that takes a lot more work. Still, I agree that it'd be nice if he'd put stuff out a little more frequently even if it doesn't look as nice.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 06:59
|
|
|
I was wondering why is he so drat scared of going back to regular, punchline driven one offs, and I think it's related to what he said about feeling in a rut, making a disposable product, and basically being burnt out, maybe more complex, 'deeper' comics are his solution to the problem, but dang, man, it's okay, you can be simple and funny sometimes too, you ain't gonna become Garfield all of a sudden.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 08:20
|
|
|
Dominion posted:So you want the thread to be, what, just a bunch of "remember that time" posts? There's not much to talk about in an Achewood thread nowadays other than complain about lack of updates, complain about lovely updates, or complain about Onstad. This thread has been going for over two years, and literally all of your posts in it are bitching about updates/cookbooks/strip quality. Go read something else, maybe? I do realize there's not a lot going on Achewood-wise, but it's not like we're keeping the strip going by posting frequently. Maybe Onstad would do better by releasing Achewood graphic novel-style? He clearly wants to tell longer-format, weirder stories, and a thrice-weekly strip isn't really the best format for that. I'd be perfectly happy to see one big release every six months.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 19:15
|
|
|
At the moment I'd just be happy with the rest of the current collection put together in those excellent Dark Horse volumes he'd been doing. I love those, the strips, the alt text, commentary by Onstad on each strip and book-specific sections of character POV text
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 19:23
|
|
|
Personally, this arc seems like pretty classic achewood to me? The first one cracked me up, particularly Roast Beef's insistence that we ain't calling nobody Michael. Next comic has the always-funny Dr Andretti and Log Party, Oh uh, I mean Steamroller. The next one has some very pretty art and typical achewood surrealism. Then there's I HAVE A PRINCE ALBERT. Ray's face in the last comic combined with the sheer absurdity of the situation cracked me up. Honestly, I don't care if the man updates once a month as long as he keeps putting out material of this quality. I mean really, for those of you who haven't, go back and read forward from the start of this arc. It all reads quite nicely! Better than the majority of strips from 2010 I'd say.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2012 19:29
|
|
|
The Pony Incident posted:I mean really, for those of you who haven't, go back and read forward from the start of this arc. It all reads quite nicely! Better than the majority of strips from 2010 I'd say. I think that's the biggest issue - the glacial pace at which the current story is progressing makes the whole thing just seem disjointed and meaningless. It'd be like if you read a novel by selecting one paragraph off of one page at random each day, and tried to keep a mental tally of what the hell was going on. I also agree that a lot of the current story would work just as well with a cast of characters that had nothing to do with Achewood. Other than the fact that Ray's alcoholism served as the set-up to put him into this bizarre series of events, there's really nothing about the character of 'Ray' that is essential to what's been happening. You could probably infer that Ray isn't the most progressive dude with regards to women based on how he interacted with Tina, and how he reacted when Beef and Molly were going to be married, but I don't feel like two statements about how women are stereotypically bad at math really necessitate that Ray be the character involved in this story. It kind of feels like, since Ray wasn't really involved in Philppe growing up, or the Achewood High arcs, he got included because he's a 'main character' and readers would expect him to be featured if the comic is really back for good; it'd be like relaunching a Batman comic and having, I don't know, Dick Grayson as Bayman, in that no one would buy it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2012 04:25
|
|
|
A dude walks down a street and a plane lands on his head; he never did what mattered. Just sayin'.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2012 15:52
|
|
|
I ordered A Home for Scared People off of Amazon, since I didn't know it was even out. I really enjoyed the prose extras that were put in, along with the sentence or two of extra stuff for each comic. Dark Horse has really done a great job with them so far, I'd love to see more of them get made.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2012 11:08
|
|
|
homeless poster posted:...it'd be like relaunching a Batman comic and having, I don't know, Dick Grayson as Batman, in that no one would buy it. Now Ray as Batman and Roast Beef as Robin...possibilities...hmm...
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2012 15:12
|
|
|
Nonvalueadded User posted:Now Ray as Batman and Roast Beef as Robin...possibilities...hmm... Needs to be the other way around. Recasting Batman's grim angst as Roast Beef's depression would work out, and Ray makes a better Robin than Beef does.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2012 17:17
|
|
|
You're all missing the obvious choice: Phillipe as Robin.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2012 18:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 01:00 |
|
|
Cornelius as Alfred would be delightful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2012 20:10
|
|
